Something Good

Photo by eyeliam.


ETA:  This is our first ever guest post here at the Something Good blog!  If you are interested in writing a guest post, please contact me at lornadoone at comcast dot net.  It’s been really fun working with Neva, and if you want to learn more about what she has to say about veganism, I encourage you all to check out her Neva Vegan blog.  She has also graciously agreed to answer any of your questions (about her personal choice or veganism in general) in the comments.  Please be aware that your comments will not appear immediately, as I am screening them to protect guest bloggers.

Hi, my name is Neva and I’m a vegan.

I’ve been vegan for thirteen years and was vegetarian for five years prior to that.  Being a vegan isn’t everything I am, I’m also an artist, a hard worker, a gardener, an animal-rescuer, a sister, an aunt, a wife, a friend, a neighbor and a general goof-ball. 

For a long time now I’ve considered veganism one way I try to do something good for the world.  Lately I’ve gotten some back up on that idea from some pretty influential sources.  The United Nations FAO report on global warming named animal agriculture as the primary single cause of global warming, ahead of cars or factories.  This demonstrates that the choices we make in what we put on our plate actually affect the entire planet.

Just as an example of the difference being vegan makes I took the “Ecological Footprint” quiz.  First I answered everything accurately, with myself as a vegan.  Then I retook the quiz answering everything else the same but putting in that I ate the standard American diet which includes either meat, eggs, or dairy with every meal.  My ecological footprint increased by 50%, and actually it added almost one entire planet to the number of planets we’d need if everyone lived like that.  I’m not saying I’m perfect.  The quiz does show I need to do better in terms of adding energy conserving features, maybe even solar panels to my home, and I need to buy less stuff.  Still being vegan significantly reduced my ecological footprint.

If you want to read more about veganism, I’d suggest visiting Vegan Outreach.

Quick thoughts for veganizing:

When people learn I’m vegan, lots of them say that they think it’s a great idea, but it sounds so hard and they don’t think that they personally could do it.  I don’t know if I can tell anyone what they are or aren’t capable of, but I will tell you that if anyone had asked me even two weeks before I first became vegetarian or a month before I became vegan I would have said “No, that’s too hard.  I don’t think I could do that.”  Still I’ve done it successfully for more than a decade now.

• Find several dishes you like and are easy to fix and rotate them.  Some simple tasty dishes include pasta primavera with fresh veggies, garlic, and olive oil, or pita sandwiches stuffed with lettuce, shredded carrot, salad dressing and hummus.
• Find a way to enjoy some of your current favorite foods in a vegan version.  Some of our favorite meals, like spaghetti with marinara sauce are either already vegan or easy to tweak.  In fact people who like spaghetti with meat sauce find that they love the taste of spaghetti sauce made with a faux “ground beef” like Morningstar Farms Recipe Crumbles or Boca Ground Burger.  These products have a nice flavor and mix into your meals just like ground beef.  They are low in fat (or in some cases fat free), have no cholesterol, and contain important phyto-nutrients that you might not get from other sources.  They are so good that even my stubborn family members who still eat a lot of meat use them in sauces or soups because they’re easy, tasty, and much better for you.
• Eat International! Much of the world is almost vegan just by economic necessity, so many tasty dishes are already vegan.  I enjoy eating Ethiopian vegetarian food, some Indian dishes (some contain butter or cheese, but many don’t) and vegetarian pad thai.  There are lots of Middle Eastern and Greek dishes that fit the bill too.  Many of my friends who came to the US say that restaurants here put meat  or shrimp into traditionally vegetarian dishes to try to please American tastes, but most of these places are happy to leave the meat off as well.
• Read some vegan food blogs or cookbooks for ideas.  A couple of my favorite blogs are Vegan Eats and Treats and The Conscious Kitchen.  There is a livejournal community called Vegan Cooking as well. (http://community.livejournal.com/vegancooking/
• Isa Chandra Moskowitz, author of Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World, Vegan with a Vengeance, and soon to be release Veganomicon has this advice for those who say they want to eat a more environmentally friendly diet, and they care about animals, but they can’t give up this one favorite food of theirs:  “Give up everything else, except the one thing you can’t live without.  We can talk about that later.”  I went vegetarian “cold turkey” and later went vegan “cold turkey” but some people need to ease into it.

I was mentioning somewhere else today that I keep coming across the word “balance.”  It has popped up everywhere in the last week or so.  I just started a yoga class on Monday, and I’m not sure if that counts as running into the word “balance” or if it’s the reason that I keep noticing it all around me!

And, now I go on a tangent

I don’t actually believe in astrology.  I think it’s fun and all, but it just isn’t the right answer for me.  That’s why I find it incredibly amusing that my zodiac sign is so darn accurate.  I’m a Libra, and my sign is the scales, also known, as I learned today, as “the Balance.”  Go figure.   

Let’s see.  Interested in justice.  Check.  Weighs all sides of a situation.  Yep.  Has difficulty making decisions.  Uh-huh.  Avoids conflict.  Oh yeah.  Seeks a harmonious environment, loves beauty, offers praise . . .  I think I can stop here.

Back to the post at hand

Now that we’ve determined that balance and harmony are important to me, I wanted to see if we couldn’t add a little more of that to the Something Good blog.  One of the things that we discovered back when we did the group writing project is that a lot of you have some great ideas to share.  Your posts ranged from protecting the environment to becoming stronger people, to being conscientious pet owners.  It was wonderful!

I’d like to offer our readers the opportunity to share their own suggestions for Something Good by being a guest blogger for a day.  If you have your own blog, this could be an opportunity to get a little publicity for it, as you could include a short blurb about it in the guest post here.  On the other hand, you might just have a really great idea that you think more people should know about.  Maybe it’s something you came up with on your own.  Maybe it’s something you read about somewhere else and thought, “Gee, everyone should hear about that!”

I love how interactive Something Good has been in the last year, and I want to make it even more balanced by inviting you to take the helm for a day.  Whether you’re a regular commenter or not, we want to hear how you think we can add a little Something Good to our lives.

If you have questions or want to submit a post, send it to me at lornadoone at comcast dot net.  Not sure about your topic?  Drop me a line, and we can chat about it.  Obviously, I do have to use some discretion to make sure that any guest posts fit the overall positive tone of the Something Good blog.  Whether you have a short tip or a long anecdote, we want to hear it!